thread for contemplating the serious issues raised by the Men's Rights movement

So, have men been feminised by society recently?

I would answer that in the negative, bcoz a) essentially 'masculine' or 'feminine' traits, if they do exist, turn out to be pretty hard to find empirically and b) it's just too much of a 'good old days' scenario – once I could have lived up to the ideal of a Man, but that was in the old days, before (whoever) got in the way and also before I was born

(by traits I mean personality traits and behavours, not penis and vagina)

However, in the UK at least (and in the US?) there has been a measurable shift in society with industrial jobs vanishing through being outsourced and a rise in service economy and intellectual labour: anecdotally I know lots of people who were left behind by this shift, could this be a genuine thing, the real story behind the talk of feminists taking over and forcing men to be feminine that one hears so much about on men's rights activism websites

This is generally how I feel about most of the MRA talking points, anyway: their framing of the situation is all wrong and ends up blaming Mummy or Women generally, but there is often some genuine problem or complex underlying it which can and should be talked about without necessarily being shouted down by LOL MALE TEARS.

The talk of 'nice guys' being put in a 'friendzone' is, a percentage of the time, pure dodgy whining, however, some men from certain backgrounds and youths and upbringings will have reason to feel ... a certain way about standards of masculinity (you're only a man if you hate pakis and faggots) that defined who got the girls (who were for shagging, gi a fuck if they get pregnant) and which effectively shut these men out of life (or so it may seem, subjectively) ... a lot of these men could be forgiven (?) if they get their keels caught on the barrier reef of 'I'm a nice guy, why won't people have sex with me' and associated lyrics

iirc donna haraway actually refers to part of that change/process as the feminization of labor—the replacement of stable, career-track jobs w/ less-stable part-time, freelance, etc jobs that resemble the types of work traditionally afforded to and/or forced upon women

xp

Looking at it from another angle, I have often found MRA talk to be a kind of 'overshooting' or 'doth protest too much' discourse, e.g.,

We can all see that Walter White has attractive elements to him, let's discuss that, but woah, you actually think he's the hero of the show?

Yeah, I don't like yuppies either, calculating their relationships like that but woah, hang on guys, you do realise male yuppies are as bad as female yuppies? Right? Oh.

Yeah, sure, 'surface' people seem to do alright for themselves, aren't they awful ... but woah hang on guys women wearing makeup are hardly the worst example of this I mean is that even ...

whenever I stumble upon any of this talk it's like I've fallen into some alternate universe. friendzone? mra? wtf. apparently I am old.

FWIW, there's a handy chart someone's done showing the contradictions of 'The Red Pill', an example of an MRA community on reddit:

http://i.imgur.com/qutEGRb.png

akm, the friendzone is where a woman uses a man (a 'nice guy') for lifts/money/affection, keeping him erotically interested, whilst never planning to bring him into a sexual relationship. The friendzoning woman is supposed to reserve her intimacy for 'bad boys'. The rube tags along, putting the woman on a 'pedestal'. But swallow the Red Pill, and you can escape this 'matrix' of female lies, etc.

It may sound like the sort of thing teenage lads would go on about but no, it's apparently very popular with adult men on the internet and even a few of my IRL acquaintances have been heard to talk about it.

(What, Cardamon, have you honestly never felt like you were this rube? Not quite, at times I've just barely avoided adopting this piece of wisdom, and what prevented me from getting on board with it, even in my saddest little moments, was the undertone of about 'women using thuh men for thuh money'. I've never been in a position to throw money around to try and get sex, so have never really come round to see myself as a man of means at risk of depletion)

i have known men to actively "friendzone" themselves, in what seems a sort of deliberate avoidance strategy. such men befriend attractive young women, shower them with expensive gifts, emotional support, time & attention -- all the while (and somewhat resentfully) hoping for sexual favors that will clearly never materialize. i tend to view such arrangements as the "dating behavior" of guys who are too afraid to actually pursue viable romantic relationships, subbing a glamorous fantasy for the risks & complexities of the real thing.

the idea of just one mra type getting into donna haraway via the feminization of work thing is pure bliss to me

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/419F5rPaj7L.jpg

Thread for the focusing on the clownishness of yr stereotypical mra as clowned on every other internet site not actually run by such.

http://i.imgur.com/UiJ6paV.jpg

http://www.salon.com/2013/12/08/american_mens_hidden_crisis_they_need_more_friends/

Funny how for these dudes becoming friends with a woman is like the worst thing thing that can happen

Just another thought: Its ironic that we would find any of this surprising when you realize that all the places where men had access to each other and build friendships have been criticized and demolished.

Mens clubs, the smoke rooms, even sports teams and the military- essentially all the spaces where men were able to bond with each other and build relationships in a way that men could feel comfortable with- have been invaded, criticized and blown open by women and feminism in an effort to undo "patriarchy"

Literally 99% of the comments are like this.

"patriarchy"

The article itself is valid though and not mra-related at all. Macho self-sufficiency is an inhuman value code and trying to live by it leads to loneliness.

The article itself is good (apart from the "man up" ending which I agree with the commenters on).

Self-sufficiency isn't always cos machismo what about social anxiety and stuff?

i have loads of men friends we talk about manly stuff mostly we meet in this men's space called the pub

i am very sympathetic to male social anxiety as that basically is my entire life in three words but at the same time i don't think there's anything to it that is specific to males or maleness xp

in fact i could imagine having many more things to be anxious about on a day to day basis were i a woman

http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2014/04/male_rape_in_america_a_new_study_reveals_that_men_are_sexually_assaulted.html

Stemple, who works with the Health and Human Rights Project at UCLA, had often wondered whether incidents of sexual violence against men were under-reported. She had once worked on prison reform and knew that jail is a place where sexual violence against men is routine but not counted in the general national statistics. Stemple began digging through existing surveys and discovered that her hunch was correct. The experience of men and women is “a lot closer than any of us would expect,” she says. For some kinds of victimization, men and women have roughly equal experiences. Stemple concluded that we need to “completely rethink our assumptions about sexual victimization,” and especially our fallback model that men are always the perpetrators and women the victims.

ok i'm pretty sure that no boys thread is basically just misandry at this point - it's not acceptable when a bunch of men sit around complaining about women, the reverse is equally gross.

no

yup

lmao

liberté, égalité, misandré

you're either trolling or being willfully obtuse

but in case you're not, by some miracle

it is not the same thing because of the various historical, institutional, and societal supports that misogyny has propping it up (cf. cracker vs the n-word)

that's a lovely thought but utter bullshit. the historical reality of misogyny does not excuse a bunch of ppl of a particular gender or race sitting around talking shit about another gender or race. it's not cool and the "historical, institutional, and societal" argument needs to be retired. nb i realize that there's no way i can make this argument without someone going "TROLLING."

like i'd never say "cracker" is as bad a word as the n-word but if a bunch of black ppl started a "no whites allowed" thread and started talking about how white ppl are always doing X, Y, and Z that would be equally uncool. even tho historically white ppl have not been victims of racism.

will no one think of the white men

saying it's okay to shit on someone bc they're a white man is bigotry whether or not they can handle the heat.

tbh i hadn't read the no boys allowed thread b/c it's on some sub-board but now i have read the past 50 or so posts and *applause* everywhere and also none of it is remotely surprising and the shit-talking is about a hundredth as vicious as it could rightly be

it's kinda shocking i even need to be saying this. it should be self-evident.

i don't think *ahem* ALL men are being impugned in that thread, dude

http://i0.wp.com/www.postbourgie.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/so-if-its-not-racist-to-have-a-black-history-month-why-cant-we-have-a-white-history-month-hmmm.jpeg?fit=400%2C400

or, to draw a subtle distinction, all of men

when male friends sit around complaining about their wives not ALL women are being impugned but guess what? all women are actually being impugned. that's the nature of gender-based stereotyping, even when it's not about "all men" or "all women"

lol you guys are so gone into the rabbit hole that this very obvious point is eliding you. i'm not calling for a white history month, or claiming that white men experience unfair racism or sexism in society. i agree that white men are at the top of the hierarchy. that's a totally different conversation. i'm saying that just bc they have tons of societal "privileges" doesn't mean it's suddenly fair game to start maligning them as a group.

http://jolulipa.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/misandry-it-has-a-wikipedia-page.jpg

http://37.media.tumblr.com/43d8b3653a56ef93b53fe163f077de43/tumblr_mk4ussZOWB1rl6c79o1_r1_500.gif

fuck off, phil.

http://37.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_me0u38mR5U1rl6c79o1_500.gif

http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m8i3nuOqFW1qb0k5e.gif

misandry gifs <3

absolutely. i am serious about that and i wd like the comedy image macros to stay in one of their other homes.

― thus spake darraghthustra (Noodle Vague), Monday, November 18, 2013 7:13 AM (6 months ago) Bookmark

‘”Why do men feel threatened by women?” I asked a male friend of mine. So this male friend of mine, who does by the way exist, conveniently entered into the following dialogue. “I mean,” I said, “men are bigger, most of the time, they can run faster, strangle better, and they have on the average a lot more money and power.” “They’re afraid women will laugh at them,” he said. “Undercut their world view.”

Then I asked some women students in a quickie poetry seminar I was giving, “Why do women feel threatened by men?” “They’re afraid of being killed,” they said.’

Margaret Atwood, Writing the Male Character (1982)